It is often desirable to control, or prevent, the exposure of both liquid and gas media to people. For example, if the liquid is urine or menses, it is desirable to keep the liquid from contacting the skin of the person. Furthermore, it is recognized such liquids often generate malodorous gases which are objectionable.
The prior art has attempted to deal with this problem by absorbing the liquids and/or deodorizing any resultant gases. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,690,415, issued to Shuler Sept. 28, 1954, discloses an odor adsorbent medium wherein the active is layered in two strata, one on each side of a core of cushion plies. This assembly, which is then sandwiched by an outer covering, provides no means to control, or contain, any liquids which may generate the gases adsorbed by the active strata.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,939,838, issued to Fujinami et al. on Feb. 24, 1976, discloses a catamenial pad which has a deodorant active dispersed throughout an absorbent core. U.S. Pat. No. 2,418,907, issued to Schreiber on Apr. 15, 1947, discloses a sanitary napkin with a deodorant medium disposed in discrete pockets between the topsheet and absorbent core of the napkin. These teachings, however, suffer from the drawback that malodorous gases exiting the absorbent core towards the topsheet may not encounter the active dispersed therethroughout if such gases are generated at an elevation above the deodorant active, or may encounter the border areas between individual pockets of the deodorant. Furthermore, no means to prevent wetting of the deodorant upon fluid entry, and possibly subsequent loss of efficacy, is provided by these teachings.